


Day 612

by Umi_no_arawashi



Series: Snowfall verse [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Cutieroth, Gen, Hojo is a creep anyway, No Hojo in this I promise, Science Experiments, Shinra Electric Power Company Science Department, Toddler!sephiroth, abuse of grad students, toddlers always win
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24036109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umi_no_arawashi/pseuds/Umi_no_arawashi
Summary: Just a little bonus to Snowfall. More about the experiment described in chapter 8.Featuring uncontrollable toddler!Seph and a harassed grad student who should have planned his experiment a little better.
Series: Snowfall verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/936825
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Day 612

“Sephiroth. Do not chew on the card.” Sorrel sighed. It was only mid-morning, but it felt like much later. “See? Look at the card. Do you see the points?”

The child rolled his eyes - rolled his eyes! you’d think this was a teenager, not a toddler - and extracted the card, slightly worse from wear, from between his teeth. He copied Sorrel’s gesture, turning the card over. He looked as though he thought this was the most pointless thing he’d ever been asked to do.

“You see the points? Now. All the cards have points. But…” Sorrel was struggling to keep things simple. He had been briefed that even though the specimen wasn’t behaving exactly like a normal child, Professor Gast insisted that people treat him as one. This posed a problem to Sorrel, though. As a single grad student, he hadn’t talked to anyone under the age of 25 in about ten years. “Right. So. You see the points? Some cards have many points. Some cards have few points, yes?”

Sephiroth just looked at him, blinking slowly, the card still in his chubby little hand. Well, at least he had his attention.

“Right, so this is what you do. You put the cards in order, ok? So this one, for example, has four points. And the one you’re holding has… well, it has more, right?”

“Has thwirty-seben,” said the toddler, with a lisp.

“Does it? Uh. If you say so.” Sephiroth couldn’t possibly have counted the dots. He had barely looked at the card before deciding it would be a good idea to put it in his mouth. When Sorrel thought how long he’d spent making make all those cards… It was a good thing he’d laminated them.

“Thwirty-seben,” repeated Sephiroth with finality.

“Ok.” Sorrel wasn’t going to argue the point. “Uh. So you put the one with less points here, and the one with more here.” He grabbed the slightly sticky card from the toddler’s fist and put it down next to the other one. “See? Which one is less? Which one is more?”

The toddler was looking at him as though he was the stupidest person he’d ever seen. “Thwirty-seben bigger,” he said, not unkindly, as though he was honestly worried that Sorrel didn’t know such things.

“Yes. Yes, exactly.” Sorrel sighed. “So, now you take all the cards, and you do that with all of them, ok? And I’ll time how long it’ll take you.”

He nudged the cardboard box full of cards towards the toddler.

Sephiroth pushed the box back with both hands. “No,” he said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“No.” Sephiroth shook his head, the white mane of hair falling down his back emphasizing the gesture. Sorrel had heard about how, at first, they’d tried to cut it, but it grew back so fast they had finally given up. It gave the toddler a slightly worrying, feral look, especially when coupled with those strange eyes. “Don’t want. Bwowing.”

“It’s not boring!” said Sorrel, offended. “It’s part of a very interesting experiment. You want to help, don’t you?”

Sephiroth shook his head again and crossed his arms. “No,” he pouted, his lower lip sticking out. “Don’t want.”

“Sephiroth…” Sorrel’s legs were cramping from the squatting position he’d chosen to put himself at the same height as the toddler. The books had said it was essential to keep one’s eyes at the same level than the child’s to maintain its attention. The books hadn’t said it would hurt. “Sephiroth, if you don’t do what I ask, I will be sad. You don’t want to make me sad, do you?”

Sephiroth regarded him with narrowed eyes. It was clear he didn’t care in the slightest. 

“Listen, if you are nice and you do what I ask, you’ll get a sweet. You like sweets, don’t you?”

“Don’t want.” The child raised himself onto his feet, carefully pushing himself up with both hands. He took a few slightly uncertain steps towards Sorrel, then, with all the strength of his little arms, pushed him. “Go ‘way.”

Sorrel lost his balance and fell back, hard, onto his cards. There was a sad, crushing sound as the box was flattened.

One of Sephiroth’s nurses, attracted by the commotion, moved closer. It was a stern-faced angular woman, with round metal glasses. “Are you quite alright, Mr Sorrel?” she asked.

“My cards!” he wailed, trying to gather them up. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to be as damaged as the box.

She raised her eyebrow in a pitying look. “Do you need help with the boy?” she asked.

He looked at her again. Suddenly, she didn’t look stern and unprepossessing, she looked like an angel made flesh. “Yes. Please.” He looked up at her, pleading. “Please, please help me.”

She smirked superciliously. “You just have to show proper authority, that’s all. Young man!” she called. Sephiroth had gone to the corner of the room, where he seemed to be playing with a small discarded piece of paper. “Young man, come over here right now and apologise to nice Dr Sorrel.”

“Uh…” whispered Sorell. “Actually, I’m a doctoral student, I’m not a doctor yet…”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know that, does he?” she snapped. “Sephiroth! Come over here right now and apologise to the nice doctor.”

Sephiroth looked up. His eyes seemed to be shining weirdly. He smirked. “Not doctchor,” he said. “Doctchral shudent.” 

“Well, it’s the same thing. Come over now, Sephiroth, or you’ll be punished.”

“Not same.” The child said, and smirked again. When you looked at him from this angle, his eyes seemed positively snakelike. “Don’t want,” he added, and then, giggling, he got up and started running around the room. It was very disconcerting. He looked, at every given second, as though he was about to fall and crash to the ground, and yet somehow, he kept his balance, running joyfully in increasingly tight circles, arms held out to his sides.

“Sephiroth! You’ll be punished! You know what will happen! I’ll call Pr Hojo, and you’ll know what he’ll say.”

“Don’t want ‘fessor ‘jo,” said Sephiroth, sitting down heavily on his backside. “No ‘fessor ‘jo.”

“Right, then you know what to do. Come help nice Mr Sorrel with his experiment.”

Sephiroth pouted. “No. Bwowing.”

“Sephiroth. Just… how about you show us how fast you can do it? You know how you like when everyone thinks you did well, don’t you?”

Sephiroth didn’t seem convinced, but he crawled back to the cards. He picked up one of them. “Sventy-six,” he said immediately.

“Uh…” Sorrel cleared his throat. “No, you’re not getting it, you’re not supposed to _guess_ how many dots there are, you’re supposed to try to evaluate.. Uh… I mean, decide… uh, which looks bigger of two random cards.”

Sephiroth blinked at him. “Sventy-six,”, he said firmly, and then he threw the card to the ground. “Don’t want this. Want ‘fessor Gast. Want ‘fessor Gast now.”

“Sephiroth! You know full well Professor Gast is on sabbatical! Now, are you going to behave for the nice man?”

The child crossed his arms and shook his head.

“You will listen to me, young man. Now, you can behave, or we can call professor Hojo. It’s your choice.”

She kept trying, her tone growing more and more irritated with each furious shake of the head. Sorrel sat down on the floor, slightly dazed. The nurse had picked up Sephiroth, and he was flailing in her arms, screaming for Professor Gast, as she tried to calm him. 

Sorrel was getting a headache. And now, for some reason, Sephiroth had started to scream about something else.

“Want Ba-wa. Now. Now!”

“Sephiroth, you know you’re not allowed your toy during experiment time. You’ll get him tonight.”

“Want Ba-wa!”

“No, Sephiroth, and besides, you know what Professor Hojo said, you’re not supposed to call him that.”

“I DON’T WANT ‘FESSOR ‘JO, I WANT BA-WA!” screamed the toddler at the top of his voice. He definitely did seem to have an impressive set of lungs.

“What’s Ba-wa?” asked Sorrel, taking advantage of a small lull in the yelling.

“It’s… his dog,” said the nurse, struggling to keep the child in her arms as he wriggled and fought. “A toy. Professor Hojo has written a few papers about it, actually… Sephiroth, if you don’t stop squirming, I’ll drop you, I swear.” Her glasses were askew. “I can give you a copy, if you like.”

“Yes, please, if you’d be so kind,” said Sorrel. He’d never felt so defeated in his life. “I think it’s better if we stop here, don’t you?”

“Well… perhaps. Sephiroth! Stop kicking me immediately. I will call Professor Hojo, you know that.”

“Right. I’ll… I’ll just tidy up, then, shall I?”

Sorrel picked up the card Sephiroth had fling to the ground. Idly, he started counting. 

He sighed.

Seventy-six dots. 

Of course.


End file.
